Friday, September 10, 2010

Autumnal musings

It is no coincidence that Tolkien starts his great Trilogy in the Autumn. There is a poignancy to this time of year that is very close to the feeling of reading a good story, full of tragedy and adventure. It's a time of endings. The apple ripe on the tree is just about to start rotting, and then in it's frost spiked brown senility, it is a thing of beauty, that causes me to inhale the crisp frosty air, savoring the silver brown wonder of it.It is still barely early autumn here but already the morning hills are obscured by chilly mist, it's a time when the world seems less certain; it's easier to imagine that things aren't strictly as they seem. The fox is plotting in it's den, the barn cat can speak but chooses not to.Time for fires and old tales told around them, the imagination stretches into the early darkness and makes hobgoblins and sylphs in the ground mist.It is a good time to be a maker of things. Hands curl around tools, eyes gloat on emerging patterns dwarfishly, and the artifacts of autumn begin to emerge.